On-Demand Mobility Services Are Converging Industries

The past five years have brought unprecedented convenience to our lives by eliminating the need to go to the grocery store or pick up food. We now have the means to get by without having to compromise on getting things done. Why go to a store to shop when Amazon can bring it to you in just a few hours? If you dislike grocery shopping, you do not have to go the supermarket for weekly supplies anymore, all you have to do it get out your smartphone, install an on-demand grocery delivery app like Instacart, Shipt and Peapod, order your groceries from different stores and have them delivered to you, hassle-free. On-demand mobility services are driving new business models that are converging different industry verticals and providing reliable transportation solutions to customers. Let us take a look at a couple of use cases.

The Food Industry

Remember the time when all you could get delivered was pizza? Then came fast food chains like Taco Bell and McDonald’s that made food easy to pick up. Now, we have companies like DoorDash, Postmates, GrubHub and UberEats that deliver food ordered from a variety of restaurants. All you have to do is click a bunch of buttons on your smartphone to order the food and ‘voila’ there it is – delivered to you in a few minutes. These companies have created a whole new business model to cater to those customers who would pay to get their food delivered rather than make the trip to the restaurant. Restaurants benefit from this concept as well, they increase their customers without having to dedicate resources to food delivery services. Customers are happy because they get their food delivered to them, restaurants are happy because they are able to increase their business and the drivers working for these on-demand food delivery companies are also happy as they are making money by driving around and delivering the food. It is a win-win situation for everybody involved. Founded in 2013 by four Stanford students, DoorDash recently raised $535 million and is valued at about $1.4 billion today.

The Health Industry

Due to a lack of reliable transportation and no-show rates at hospitals are as high as 30% nationwide. These missed appointments cost the healthcare system more than $150 billion a year. The transportation barrier is more cumbersome for patients and elderly people. Seeing this as a great opportunity, Uber recently launched UberHealth, dedicated on-demand mobility services for healthcare organizations to provide reliable, comfortable and safe transportation for patients. Lyft followed suit immediately, announcing Lyft Concierge and a new partnership with Allscripts, a large electronic health record company that reaches about 7 million patients. Uber and Lyft provide healthcare companies with a digital dashboard through which they can schedule rides for multiple patients going to and from the care that they need. The platform pushes an SMS alert to passengers about the scheduled ride and the business provider typically covers the cost. These on-demand services enable people with limited mobility to get all the health care that they need without them needing to worry about how they will get there.

The Future of On-Demand Mobility Services

On-demand mobility is one of the most important trends in transportation and in the global economy today. The popularity of this trend has increased due to the ease of ordering, scheduling and paying for rides through a smartphone app. Uber, Lyft, Didi and Ola among other companies, have enabled ride-sharing, car-sharing and last-mile delivery services which are driving a global shift away from personal vehicle ownership to a shared, on-demand model. This is just the beginning. Autonomous vehicles will soon start appearing on the road and will take over from human drivers, allowing multi-modal transportation systems to be formed. These systems will be accessed on-demand through smartphone apps that will make it really convenient for the customer to use, whether it is planning the best route to get home or paying for the trip.

On-demand mobility services will also promote choice in personal mobility and allow the personalization of user experiences for customers. Just like Uber and Lyft have a variety of mobility options you can choose from, ranging from a simple carpool experience to a premier business class experience, in the future, customers will be able to choose the kind of mobility service they want to use depending on their needs. Toyota’s e-Palette Concept Vehicle, designed to meet the demands of future multi-mode transportation and business applications, demonstrates the customization of in-vehicle experiences based on the purpose the vehicle is used for.

Netflix, who provides on-demand video services, has grown their number of subscribers from 20 million in 2010 to 118 million today. How many millennials go to a store and rent a DVD at an automated retail kiosk today? Many retail stores that do not have a strong digital presence are shutting down thanks to online retailers like Amazon that make it quicker and easier to shop. Before long, all physical things will be delivered to our doorstep with just a few clicks on the smartphone or a few words word spoken to a digital assistant such as Alexa (in the case of Amazon). For millennials, the concept of shopping has shifted from owning things to buying into new ideas that are based on cost-effective on-demand service models. “Soon, every service business will transform into a ‘services-on-wheels’ business and mobility-as-a-service will enable that transformation.” said Mahbubul Alam, CTO/CMO at Movimento, an Aptiv company. The future is heading toward Automated Mobility On-Demand (AMoD) Services, which will become an integral part of the service industry.

As the auto industry is changed by technological and economic currents, OEMs and Tier-1 manufacturers will need to partner with technological specialists to thrive in the era of the software defined car. Movimento’s expertise is rooted in our background as an automotive company. This has allowed us to create the technological platform that underpins the future of the software driven and self-driven car. Connect with us today to learn more about how we can work together.